


Love Vigilantes: Redux

by patrickswayze



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Post Vietnam War AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-16
Updated: 2017-09-16
Packaged: 2018-12-27 11:04:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12079791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patrickswayze/pseuds/patrickswayze
Summary: It's 1975 and Sam Wilson is pushed back into civilian life after a tour in Vietnam. All he's got is a job in a record store and an ex-Green Beret who keeps coming around. But maybe that's all he needs?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For the Sam Wilson Big Bang, I collaborated with [ butterflyslinky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/butterflyslinky/pseuds/butterflyslinky) to create a playlist [here!](https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ante41m6h6lerqz/AAAL1o0i_NrNzEB2daeZdJRra?dl=0)
> 
> Historical notes found in the next chapter.

The cold, wet sound of his bare feet hitting sand mixes with the crash and fall of the waves to his right. Sam counts his inhalations and exhalations. _In, out. In, out._ Far ahead, the vague shapes of buildings distorted by fog mark his end point. The runway of sand is empty save for him. No cars or surfers catching an early wave. Just him and the grey morning. It’s cold as shit this time of year and his chest feels like it’ll collapse in on itself. _June fucking gloom._

His calves are on fire and he wonders more than once how he made it two years on the ground in Saigon.

Sam knows when he’s close to hitting his limit. His thoughts get mean. The beach is ugly right now. It’s hard to think of a beach as ugly but Sam is thinking it. The sky and the waves are the same sickly grey. It’s all muddled together and a person with bad eyesight might not know where the sky starts and the water begins.

There’s a word for that. When pilots lose their sense of place. It’s a death sentence. There’s no getting out of it when you can’t know what’s up and what’s down.

Six months since he’s been discharged and every morning he runs and breathes and runs until he collapses on the sand. It’s hard to think about how he was on the other side of it, that great big ocean. She stares back at him.

It’s stupid to run until his head spins and the nausea rolls his stomach. But it’s what happens every morning. And every morning Sam finds the will to get up and go back home.

He’s on his back staring up and his hand goes to the thin piece of leather around his neck, a habit. He fingers the stone at the end of it, a glossy red pebble.

—

Soldiers thrive on routine. No, soldiers die if they don’t have a routine.

He wakes up and makes coffee. He drives to the beach and runs until he can’t move. He goes back home. He’ll read a book or do some laundry. Clean. Stare at the walls. He surfs when the water’s good. He doesn’t when it’s not. He’s surviving. That’s enough. That’s a lot more than some people get to do.

Letters come every week. His sister is in medical school and his brother is happy with his fiancée. The letters get read once and then put into a box underneath his bed. He won’t write back.

Sam is twenty-three.

He read once that the skeleton remakes itself every decade, eating and gnawing at itself until nothing is left of the original structure. This skeleton is three years old. And it’s seen dank, dark places where the air was nothing but water and gunpowder. This skeleton holds his eyeballs safely in two sockets that saw his unit fall out of the air while he was on the ground. This skeleton has had tibias, fibias, and ulnas reset and fixed in a hospital bed while Sam waited to go home. It knows hands touching him in the dark, away from his unit and the commanding officer’s attention. These new bones were forged in a jungle, charcoal-grey from bombs' smoke.

—

“Son, this is the third time you’ve been in here this week,” Mr. Ramirez says.

Startled, Sam looks up from the row of records he was thumbing through, not looking for anything in particular. Today, he ended up by the Ts. A song he likes blares away from the front of the store where Mr. Ramirez stands behind a counter, eyeing him with a slight smile on his face.

Oak Records isn’t a terribly big place, but it smells like dust, lavender, and old coffee grounds, and Sam keeps coming back for something to do. Lack of a routine can kill a soldier. He shrugs affably but doesn’t say anything.

“You want a job, kid?”

“Excuse me?”

“Afternoon ‘til closing. How about it?”

From their brief conversations over the weeks, Sam knows he likes Mr. Ramirez and the place he owns. He knows the man has grandchildren he loves to spoil and a golden cocker spaniel that cuddles up to him at bedtime even though his wife complains about the lack of space. He knows that Mr. Ramirez fought in Germany and that’s why he walks with a limp. And you’ll always hear Motown at Oak Records because _that’s the good stuff they’re geniuses over in Detroit._

“You got yourself a deal,” Sam says.

“Great. You start now. Come on over and let me show you how to ring up a customer."

As Sam walks to the back and watches Mr. Ramirez point out where the special orders are kept he bites back a smile and a tiny thing inside him dances.

—

It’s seven months, two days, and three hours since Sam got discharged when the shop door creaks open and the bell rings to announce a young man walking inside.

“Welcome to Oak Records. If you need anything, I’m Sam,” he calls out.

The man nods and turns away from the front counter where Sam is tallying the previous day’s sales. He’s walking around like he’s searching for something.

He’s got on a leather jacket that’s slightly too heavy to justify given the nature of the year-round weather in San Diego. A bandana around his head like he’s a hippie keeps his wavy hair out of his face. Sam’s eyes catch on a light blue handkerchief wrapped around his ankle above his boot. Now isn’t that interesting?

Sam pushes his paperwork away and leans his forearms on the counter, angling his body towards the stranger. It’s been a while since he’s mustered up his old charm, but he’s got nothing to lose here.

He clears his throat and says, “I, uh, like your hanky.” The young man turns around from section of big band music he was perusing to stare at Sam. He blatantly checks him out and gives Sam a look a second too long to be unintentional. He doesn’t smile at first but then breaks into a slight grin.

“James.”

“Sam. What are you looking for, James? Can I help?"

James laughs under his breath and looks up at Sam from under long eyelashes.

“There’s a couple things I think you can help me out with."

—

It’s around midnight when Sam finds himself in James’s bed with his hands behind his head, sharing a cigarette, trading stories. He’s loose, warm, and worked through. James puts on a new record and Bobby Womack is singing in the background. When he comes back to the bed, James sits up with his back against the headboard, taking slow, deep puffs and exhaling smoke into the air.

“That handkerchief wasn’t wrong,” Sam sighs, satisfied, and takes the proffered cigarette out of James’s hand.

“As long as you’re buying what I’m selling, I ain’t complaining.”

They look at each other and chuckle quietly.

“Do you rehearse these things or is the crap you say a natural talent?”

James takes the cigarette out of Sam’s hand and puts it out on the ashtray next to his nightstand.

“Seeing as how you’re naked, I’d say that it's working."

—

Over the next few weeks, James keeps finding excuses to come back to the shop, and Sam calls bullshit on every single reason, but he’s not complaining.

_(“Sir, I’m looking for a record for my sister. She’s got very strange tastes.”_

_“I thought you said you didn’t have a sister.”_

_“…Sister Mary Francis down at Immaculate Heart. Loves to boogie all night long. Says disco keeps her close to the Lord.”)_

Every day, they chat for a few minutes before James hoists himself onto the counter, his legs dangling like an overgrown kid’s. Their conversations are easy and teasing and Sam finds himself looking forward to the sound of the bell ringing and James walking in like he’s playing hooky from school.

It’s a new routine that settles down into Sam’s insides like homemade mashed potatoes and gravy.

—

He learns that James was a Greenie and ended up in the area because of its large veteran population. He likes his eggs over easy in the morning and kissing Sam deeply before he has to leave for work, frustrating Sam in the process. 

Sam tells James that his parents passed away when he was young, but the clearest memories he has are of his father in the pulpit. He feels himself drifting away, floating out of his body, each time he talks about his parents. But this time, James’s eyes light up and he begins to sing, “The only boy who could ever reach me...was the son of a preacher man.” And maybe it’s okay for a second when Sam laughs and he joins in the singing, wielding a fake microphone.

They both get nightmares and on those nights, they’ll talk until dawn and Sam takes James to go running on his beach. But these times, he doesn’t run himself sick. Half the time they end up racing each other to the end of the beach, and Sam isn’t afraid to play dirty. Once, he threw himself into a tackle to prevent James from getting ahead and they landed in the sand, laughing breathlessly.

There isn’t a prettier beach in the world, in Sam’s opinion.

—

Sam catches up with an old war buddy one afternoon in August and he gets invited out to a military bar that usually hosts guys from Pendleton. The walls are adorned with animal heads and Sam feels like he’s walking on something sticky every other step. There’s a man in a newsboy cap smoking a cigar at the end of the bar, adding to the hazy cloud of smoke clinging to the ceiling.

It’s during his second beer that a group waves him over and he stands in the corner of the bar, peeling away at the bottle’s label.

“Hey man, a couple of us are getting together every week or so. To, y’know, talk? Get this shit out of our heads and outside. You in?”

Sam thinks about it. Next week.

—

One night, they’re in bed, their bodies curled towards each other. He’s stroking James’s arm lazily, enjoying the silence. Sam gets closer and presses his nose against James’s head and it almost smells like a light rain breaking a heat wave.

It hits his guts that they’re both so young. Younger than they have any right to be. He thinks about the Roman soldiers of centuries past and how old were they? When James begins to answer, Sam realizes he said the last bit out loud.

“They were probably our age, right?”

Sam nods and pulls his arms around James, pulling him under his chin. 

—

They’re having ice cream in Balboa Park watching the children play on jungle gyms and swing sets.

James takes a big lick of his strawberry ice cream and uses his cone to point to a kid.

“Do you want one?”

“A kid?” Sam asks.

“Yeah, you know, a little rascal running around.”

Sam shrugs and grins. He’s thought about it once or twice.

—

“When are you gonna be somebody’s husband, Sam? What’s gonna make you happy?” Mr. Ramirez asks one afternoon.

He glances over at Bucky mouthing the words to “Sing a Song” and dancing shameless as all hell through the aisles of the store.

“A burger and fries.”

James shimmies his shoulders towards Sam to make him laugh and it works. That night they close shop early and sit on the hood of Sam’s car eating and throwing bits of bread to the seagulls in the parking lot.

—

Sam lugs the last of the cardboard boxes up the stairs. James is on the floor, the lazy motherfucker. Sam tells him so, and James lifts a middle finger in the air.

He sits down on the nearest box and wipes his sweaty face with his shirt. They’re in Hillcrest, miles away from the beach but it’s a good neighborhood. He can see himself here and his siblings visiting when they can. 

"Do you think it’ll be too loud with the bar around the corner?”

“Too late for that,” Sam retorts. He walks over to James and pulls him up on his feet to kiss him full on the mouth. “It’s perfect.” 


	2. Appendix

[Love Vigilantes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Vigilantes) is a song by the band New Order. My favorite version is the cover by Iron and Wine

The story is set in San Diego, a city with multiple military bases, the largest being Camp Pendleton.

Bucky is “flagging” when Sam first meets him. “Flagging” or the handkerchief code was a secret method of communication, created and used by gay men, popularized in the 1970s. Bucky is wearing a light blue handkerchief and you can check out its meaning and other color meanings [here](http://lgbt.wikia.com/wiki/Handkerchief_code)

“Greenie” is slang for Green Beret. The United States Army Special Forces, Green Berets are known for their use of unconventional warfare.

Veterans Village was started in San Diego and was one of the first organizations run by and for veterans.

Hillcrest is a traditionally gay neighborhood in the city of San Diego.


End file.
